House Demo­crats ap­pear to have found a cam­paign mes­sage more than a year and a half be­fore the midterms: Pres­id­ent Trump turned his back on the work­ing-class voters who sent him to the White House.

As Re­pub­lic­ans’ trade­mark cam­paign prom­ise to re­peal Obama­care im­ploded, top House Demo­crats de­scribed the fumble not as a sil­ver bul­let for 2018 but the be­gin­ning of two years of GOP policies that will pri­or­it­ize the wealthy at the ex­pense of a rur­al, blue-col­lar elect­or­ate that helped Re­pub­lic­ans win total con­trol of Wash­ing­ton.

With tax re­form up next, Demo­crats see the po­ten­tial for an­oth­er ma­jor data point to add to their ar­gu­ment.

“If he con­tin­ues along those lines and does tax breaks for his bud­dies and his cronies and the people like he has sit­ting around his Cab­in­et, that’s go­ing to be a prob­lem in a dis­trict like mine,” said Rep. Cheri Bus­tos of Illinois, who co­chairs the Demo­crat­ic Policy and Com­mu­nic­a­tions Com­mit­tee and who holds a rur­al seat car­ried by Trump. “We don’t have a whole lot of mil­lion­aires and I don’t think we have any bil­lion­aires.”

Rep. Denny Heck of Wash­ing­ton, who heads re­cruit­ment for the Demo­crat­ic Con­gres­sion­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee, called the health care bill “a $600 bil­lion tax cut for the very wealth­i­est of Amer­ic­ans” and warned that Re­pub­lic­ans will fail again if their tax-code-re­form ef­forts end up help­ing the rich “at the ex­pense of vul­ner­able people.”

“If they keep try­ing to do things that Amer­ica doesn’t want, then they’ll be held ac­count­able—very straight­for­ward,” Heck said.

At a press con­fer­ence Tues­day morn­ing at their na­tion­al party headquar­ters, House Demo­crat­ic lead­er­ship blas­ted Trump and House Re­pub­lic­ans as char­lat­ans for cam­paign­ing on plans to boost blue-col­lar voters, then de­clin­ing to put forth ma­jor le­gis­la­tion to be­ne­fit them in the first 67 days.

They con­tras­ted the stim­u­lus pack­age and Lilly Led­bet­ter Fair Pay Act that were passed in the first month of a Demo­crat­ic-con­trolled gov­ern­ment in 2009 to the mil­lions of work­ing fam­il­ies who could be left un­in­sured un­der the GOP’s health plan.

Mod­er­ate Re­pub­lic­ans in af­flu­ent, sub­urb­an swing seats made head­lines as they aban­doned the re­peal. But Demo­crats also noted it would have been es­pe­cially det­ri­ment­al to rur­al con­stitu­en­cies. Dis­tricts like those held by Re­pub­lic­an Reps. Sean Duffy of Wis­con­sin and Bruce Poli­quin of Maine, which are more than 70 per­cent rur­al and both backed Trump hand­ily, would have lost more in tax cred­its than neigh­bor­ing urb­an dis­tricts.

“At some point they’re go­ing to start fig­ur­ing out—’Wait a minute, this was just a whole bunch of cam­paign hype out there,’” Demo­crat­ic Rep. Ron Kind said, cit­ing the “dev­ast­at­ing” im­pact that both the Obama­care re­peal and Trump’s budget would have on his rur­al Wis­con­sin dis­trict, which the pres­id­ent won.

Demo­crats have already star­ted mak­ing that case to midterm voters. The Caucus policy com­mit­tee has hit Trump’s budget for its pro­posed cuts to pro­grams that provide rur­al job-train­ing and in­fra­struc­ture fund­ing. The DCCC launched a five-fig­ure di­git­al ad cam­paign blast­ing Re­pub­lic­ans who voted the health care bill out of com­mit­tee, and it re­leased a poll con­duc­ted this month of 1,000 voters in 52 battle­ground dis­tricts that found 54 per­cent op­posed to the GOP plan and only 30 per­cent in fa­vor.

Still, it’s not clear if Trump and House Re­pub­lic­ans are on the same page when it comes to tax re­form. On the cam­paign trail, the pres­id­ent em­phas­ized help for the middle and work­ing classes, but the con­gres­sion­al plan is ex­pec­ted to bring less re­lief to those groups.

Rep. Linda Sánchez of Cali­for­nia, one of six Demo­crats on the tax policy sub­com­mit­tee, said House Re­pub­lic­ans are craft­ing their bill in secrecy, leav­ing her skep­tic­al that the GOP plans to take tax re­form in a dir­ec­tion that would be­ne­fit work­ing fam­il­ies.

“I have been beg­ging our chair­man. I have been beg­ging our Re­pub­lic­an col­leagues to try to in­vite us in on that con­ver­sa­tion,” said Sanc­hez, the vice chair­wo­man of the House Demo­crat­ic Caucus.

Re­pub­lic­ans in­sisted there is still time to chal­lenge a nar­rat­ive that their policies are at odds with the pop­u­list bloc that elec­ted them. House Rules Chair Pete Ses­sions of Texas said Demo­crats have to wait un­til next Oc­to­ber be­fore writ­ing the book on GOP pri­or­it­ies.

Trump’s pro­posed tril­lion-dol­lar in­fra­struc­ture plan could provide a le­gis­lat­ive vic­tory, an eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus, and a chance to work with Demo­crats in one hit. And House GOP lead­er­ship an­nounced Tues­day its in­tent to keep work­ing on an Obama­care-re­peal plan.

“I don’t think in any way this is an in­dic­a­tion that we’re not go­ing to rally back with a good plan that would be good for not only the middle class but every single per­son that needs a bet­ter health care sys­tem,” said Ses­sions, a former two-term chair of the Na­tion­al Re­pub­lic­an Con­gres­sion­al Com­mit­tee.

From the start, Demo­crats have said they have to run on more than an anti-Trump plat­form even as con­tro­ver­sial le­gis­lat­ive plans take shape. The party has plenty to of­fer work­ing-class Amer­ic­ans, Demo­crats said, they just have to work harder to make sure voters are aware.

Bus­tos poin­ted to le­gis­la­tion she’s worked on to boost ex­port cen­ters for small busi­nesses and use Amer­ic­an steel in wa­ter-in­fra­struc­ture pro­jects.

“Go on the back of a pickup truck on the peri­met­er of a corn field and just sit down and talk about what we are do­ing,” she sug­ges­ted. “Let people know that not only have we not for­got­ten them, but we are fight­ing for them.”

"Two more House Republicans have joined the discharge petition to force votes on immigration, potentially leaving centrists just two signatures short of success. Reps. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) signed the discharge petition Thursday before the House left town for the Memorial Day recess. If all Democrats endorse the petition, just two more GOP signatures would be needed to reach the magic number of 218."

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FIRED FROM RUSSIAN LAUNCHER

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